If Frank Master had been asked to name the biggest rogue in New York—and it was a competitive field—he wouldn’t have paused a second before naming Fernando Wood. Born in Philadelphia, that place had been far too genteel for his talents. He’d come to New York, made a modest fortune, by one means or another, before he was thirty, and got himself in with Tammany Hall. Then he’d turned politician.

You couldn’t deny the genius of Tammany Hall. Fifty years ago, that wretch Aaron Burr had built up Tammany as a political power to get himself elected vice president. And after Tammany had successfully backed Andrew Jackson for the presidency, its Democratic Party machine had become awesomely efficient.

Tammany had got Wood elected as a Democrat to Congress. Then they’d run him for mayor of New York and nearly pulled that off too. Soon the damn fellow was going to run again. In the meantime, with the help of his Tammany Hall friends, Wood had his finger in every pie in the city.

“Might I ask your own name, sir?”

“O’Donnell is my name, sir. But in anything I say, I am speaking for Mr. Wood.”

“And what is the nature of your business with me?” Master inquired.

“You might say it is political, sir,” the Irishman replied.

Surely, Master thought, his visitor couldn’t imagine he’d support Wood for mayor.

“I suppose you know, Mr. O’Donnell,” he said evenly, “that I’m not a great friend of Tammany Hall.”

“I do, sir,” the young man answered coolly, “yet I believe that you and Mr. Wood have an interest in common.”

“And what might that be?”

“Parcel of lots on Thirty-fourth Street, west of Broadway.”

Master looked at him in surprise. It had been six months since he’d bought four lots on that block for future development, and he was still deciding what to do with them.

“You’re well informed,” he remarked drily.

“Mr. Wood is also thinking of purchasing in that block,” his emissary continued. “But there is a problem. It seems that a certain gentleman owning property there is desirous of starting a rendering plant.”

“A rendering plant?”

“Yes, sir. Grinding up carcasses from the slaughterhouse. Dead horses, too. Amazing what you can get out of them. Good business, they tell me. But messy. Not good for other property owners.”

“Not at all.”

“Bad for you, sir. Bad for Mr. Wood.”

“And what can we do?”

“Fight it, sir. We believe there’s a legal remedy, though lawyers are expensive and courts take time. More efficiently, you might say, one or two of the aldermen might be persuaded to deny the permit.”

“To vote it down?”

“We think the problem can be made to go away.”

“I see,” said Master reflectively. “But that would cost money.”

“There, sir,” said the emissary, “you come to the nub of the matter.”

“And my contribution would be …?”